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Territorial Conflict and Reconciliation in Bolivia

Kent Eaton

in Territory and Ideology in Latin America: Policy Conflicts between National and Subnational Governments

This chapter focuses on subnational policy challenges in Bolivia and on the important victories achieved by neoliberal challengers located in the country’s most powerful department: Santa Cruz. The ... More

This chapter focuses on subnational policy challenges in Bolivia and on the important victories achieved by neoliberal challengers located in the country’s most powerful department: Santa Cruz. The first half of the chapter traces the strength of Santa Cruz’s neoliberal policy regime to the economic elites who invested heavily in local institutional capacity beginning in the 1950s. When this policy regime came under attack with the rise of President Evo Morales in 2005, local elites grouped together in the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, and, led by Governor Rubén Costas, successfully maintained it by broadening its internal support coalition. The second half of the chapter explains how neoliberals in Santa Cruz also forced Morales to accept meaningful changes in his preferred, statist national policy regime, an outcome explained by the department’s structural leverage as a producer of foodstuffs and by the coalition Costas built with opposition governors in other eastern departments.Less

Strategies of the Black Pacific: Music and Diasporic Identity in Peru

Kwame Dixon and John Burdick

in Comparative Perspectives on Afro-Latin America

Chapter 2 focuses on the rise of Afro-Peruvian music and social identity as unique aspects of the Black Pacific and Afro-Latin social identity.

Cosmographical Styles at the Casa, Consejo, and Corte

in Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World

This chapter shows cosmography at a turning point. Fifty years of trying to incorporate knowledge of the New World into the cosmographical corpus had highlighted some deficiencies within ... More

This chapter shows cosmography at a turning point. Fifty years of trying to incorporate knowledge of the New World into the cosmographical corpus had highlighted some deficiencies within cosmographical practice. Two aspects receive particular attention: the inadequacy of the traditional modes of textual representation associated with Renaissance cosmography and the question of personal agency in cosmographical work. The chapter focuses on how royal cosmographer Alonso de Santa Cruz (c. 1505–67) and Philip II's right-hand man on scientific matters, Juan de Herrera (1530–97), addressed what they perceived as a tension between traditional modes of cosmographical production and the knowledge needed for the imperial program. In response, they developed distinctive styles of cosmographical practice, molded in large part by each institution's administrative duties and, increasingly, by a preference for either mathematical or didactic cosmographical tools to explicate the New World.Less

Notes from the Santa Cruz Island Reserve

John Seibert Farnsworth

in Nature beyond Solitude: Notes from the Field

This chapter presents the author's field notes from the Santa Cruz Island Reserve. The author was particularly interested in studying island foxes. Lacking natural predators, island foxes tend not to ... More

This chapter presents the author's field notes from the Santa Cruz Island Reserve. The author was particularly interested in studying island foxes. Lacking natural predators, island foxes tend not to find humans intimidating, indeed appearing tame even though they are technically wild. The island fox is currently on the rebound from endangered status. There were two thousand foxes on Santa Cruz Island in 1994, but canine distemper and golden eagle predation reduced the numbers to under 135 by 2000. The author was also interested in the endangered plants, the red-tailed hawk, the anise swallowtail, and the island scrub-jays. Not only is the island scrub-jay endemic, occurring only on the island, but it is also the only insular land bird in either the United States or Canada. The explanation for this is that scrub-jays seem incapable of crossing significant amounts of water.Less

The Making of a Movement in Santa Cruz: Uneven Regional Agrarian Development in Obispo Santiesteban and Ichilo

Nicole Fabricant

in Mobilizing Bolivia's Displaced: Indigenous Politics and the Struggle over Land

This chapter narrates the regional history of Ichilo and Obispo Santiesteban, two centrally important areas of rice and soy production, respectively, which have now become centers of Movimiento Sin ... More

This chapter narrates the regional history of Ichilo and Obispo Santiesteban, two centrally important areas of rice and soy production, respectively, which have now become centers of Movimiento Sin Tierra organizing in Santa Cruz. It charts resource extraction from the regional periphery to urban centers. This resource extractivism involves the transport of timber from the forests of Ichilo or soybeans from Obispo Santiesteban. The chapter illustrates how the illegal timber trade and export of soybeans create an uneven landscape between rural peripheries and urban areas. Borders were created between sites of extraction and consumption, forging territorial, racial, and gendered divides between producing rural peripheries and modern city centers. These borderlands are patrolled, reinforced, and maintained through subversion, intimidation, and violence.Less

Military Bases and Rubber Tires: Okinawans and Mennonites at the Margins of Nation, Revolution, and Empire, 1952–1968

Ben Nobbs-Thiessen

in Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present

This chapter explores the transnational undercurrents of Bolivia’s national revolution. It weaves together the geopolitical and environmental forces that led the Okinawans and Mennonites to Santa ... More

This chapter explores the transnational undercurrents of Bolivia’s national revolution. It weaves together the geopolitical and environmental forces that led the Okinawans and Mennonites to Santa Cruz. In postwar Okinawa, the U.S. military displaced farmers as it constructed bases on expropriated lands across the Ryukyuan archipelago. From political protests and blockades to performances of model agrarian citizenship, Okinawans contested removal and several thousand were eventually relocated to Bolivia. There Okinawans employed the same strategy of model agrarian citizenship they had used to contest U.S. removal on the Ryukyuan islands to successfully counter xenophobia in Santa Cruz. The second half of this chapter begins with the small-scale migration of Paraguayan Mennonites to Bolivia in the mid-1950s before turning to Mexico where a prolonged midcentury drought was devastating farming communities in Chihuahua. In the face of drought many Mexican Mennonites initially traveled north to work as laborers on Canadian farms. Returning to Mexico, these braceros brought modern goods and evangelical missionaries back to their traditional colonies. The result was a bitter conflict that centered on the use of rubber tires, rather than steel wheels, on Mennonite tractors and pushed forward an exodus of conservative Mennonites to Bolivia in 1968.Less

From Abandonment to Autonomy

Ben Nobbs-Thiessen

in Landscape of Migration: Mobility and Environmental Change on Bolivia's Tropical Frontier, 1952 to the Present

The Epilogue extends the history of the March to the East to the present. It returns to the personal history of current Bolivian President Evo Morales and links his personal trajectory in the March ... More

The Epilogue extends the history of the March to the East to the present. It returns to the personal history of current Bolivian President Evo Morales and links his personal trajectory in the March to the East to his administration’s current plans to extend the agricultural frontier. The epilogue also examines the ways that transnational and regional dynamics continue to unfold in this national state-building project. Just as ideas of abandonment provided a key framing narrative for the body of this work, conflicting notions of autonomy help us understand Santa Cruz at the beginning of the twenty-first century. During the well-publicized autonomy movement of 2008, residents of Santa Cruz challenged state authority emanating from the Andes and lashed out at the visible presence of highland indigenous migrants. This occurred even as lowland indigenous peoples voiced a very different set of demands for autonomy. Long silenced in the March to the East, the Guaraní, Chiquitano, Sirionó, Ayoreo, and other indigenous communities recast the narrative of settlement as one of displacement and organized to demand the return of their traditional lands.Less

The Bowland Bust: Medicine and the Law in Santa Cruz, California

Wendy Kline

in Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth

Chapter 4 traces the role of the hippie midwife from the perspective of a legal case. In 1974, three women were arrested in an undercover sting operation in Santa Cruz and charged with practicing ... More

Chapter 4 traces the role of the hippie midwife from the perspective of a legal case. In 1974, three women were arrested in an undercover sting operation in Santa Cruz and charged with practicing medicine without a license for their involvement in out-of-hospital births. Over a period of nearly three years, the case moved from the district to the state supreme court, which ruled that pregnancy was a physical condition and that the law prohibited unlicensed persons from “diagnosing, treating, operating upon or prescribing for a woman undergoing normal pregnancy or childbirth.” Bowland v. Municipal Court, which established a precedent of state restrictions over parental choice in childbirth options, suggested the near impossibility of unifying reproductive rights groups under the larger rubric of “choice.” The birth center bust showcases the potential for collaboration (between midwives and doctors, feminists, politicians and activists) as well as the obstacles that ultimately prevented them from doing so.Less

Stings of Visibility: Picture Theories and Visual Contact

Andrea Bachner

in The Mark of Theory: Inscriptive Figures, Poststructuralist Prehistories

This chapter shifts its focus to the ways in which media studies uses inscription by probing the imaginary at work in theoretical and artistic conceptualizations of visual media, especially ... More

This chapter shifts its focus to the ways in which media studies uses inscription by probing the imaginary at work in theoretical and artistic conceptualizations of visual media, especially photography. By tracing the vicissitudes of Peirce’s concept of indexicality in theories of visuality, it discusses how descriptions of the photographic act as a process of impression mediated by light have turned into metaphors of reception in which the luminous imprint of the photograph is “translated” into a violent contact with she who looks at a photograph. As this chapter investigates the various ways in which reflections on photography and poststructuralist theories of the image flatten and “translate” the material traces that produce the visual object in order to focus on its impact—figurative stings of visibility that point from the image to a viewer—it offers two literary and artistic counterpoints, two examples of the interaction of photography and text in the context of Chilean post-dictatorship art and literature, Diamela Eltit’s Lumpérica and Guadalupe Santa Cruz’s Quebrada.Less

The Toil of Man: Black Emancipation, Chinese Indenture, and the Colonization of Belize

Zach Sell

in Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital

This chapter examines mid-nineteenth century projects to colonize British Honduras. In the midst of Black emancipation in the United States, British colonial officials sought the settlement of ... More

This chapter examines mid-nineteenth century projects to colonize British Honduras. In the midst of Black emancipation in the United States, British colonial officials sought the settlement of formerly enslaved people from the United States to colonize the country. When freedpeople refused to relocate to the colony, colonial officials turned toward Chinese indentured labor. Following their resistance, British colonial officials sought to encourage the settlement of by U.S. confederates and slaveholders. These confederates were seen as crucial not only for the management of plantation estates and indentured labor but also to secure the colony against the Santa Cruz Maya.Less

Mobile “Indigenous” Citizenship: Marching for a New Agrarian Reform Law

Nicole Fabricant

in Mobilizing Bolivia's Displaced: Indigenous Politics and the Struggle over Land

The Fifth National March for Land and Territory from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba to La Paz on November 2006 was the fifth attempt by the Movimiento sin Tierra (MST) to bring indigenous communities ... More

The Fifth National March for Land and Territory from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba to La Paz on November 2006 was the fifth attempt by the Movimiento sin Tierra (MST) to bring indigenous communities together in protest for rights to land, territory, and agrarian reform. This chapter emphasizes that this march to support the New Agrarian Reform Law represented another form of mobility, specifically, indigenous bodies moving visibly through national space. It also explores how the ayllu model was assembled and reassembled in motion, and how food sovereignty turned into mobile acts when MST communities came together to participate in the march.Less

Junípero Serra’s Mission Muse: Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda and Her Writings

Anna M. Nogar

in Worlds of Junipero Serra: Historical Contexts and Cultural Representations

As Anna Nogar shows in her essay, “Junípero Serra’s Muse,” María de Jesús de Ágreda’s influence on Serra was profound, and her writings and seemingly countless bilocations to New Spain, where she ... More

As Anna Nogar shows in her essay, “Junípero Serra’s Muse,” María de Jesús de Ágreda’s influence on Serra was profound, and her writings and seemingly countless bilocations to New Spain, where she preached to Indians in their own language, were never far from the minds of Franciscan missionaries in New Spain. As Nogar argues, Serra and other missionaries carried copies of her writings to Alta California when they embarked on the colonization of the region and were spurred on by their deep faith in her revelations. Less

Our Lady of the Rosary La Naval in the Making of the Spanish Pacific

Christina H. Lee

in Saints of Resistance: Devotions in the Philippines under Early Spanish Rule

This chapter studies the history of Our Lady of the Rosary La Naval from her foundational miracles in Japan, Ternate, and Mindoro to her divine intervention in the Dutch war of 1646, the event that ... More

This chapter studies the history of Our Lady of the Rosary La Naval from her foundational miracles in Japan, Ternate, and Mindoro to her divine intervention in the Dutch war of 1646, the event that gave her the name of “La Naval.” It shows that Manila was “the gate” through which one entered the other provinces and kingdoms of Asia, and Our Lady of the Rosary became the saint who stood loyally by her Spanish soldiers, regardless of their ranks or criminal histories. More specifically, it reveals that Spanish devotees embraced her cult because her miracles reinforced what they believed to be Spain’s predestined role in the Pacific as the cross-bearer against all heathens and heretics.Less

The Ghost of Sinapupu (Tikopia and Vanikoro, 1978)

Patrick Vinton Kirch

in Unearthing the Polynesian Past: Explorations and Adventures of an Island Archaeologist

This chapter details further archaeological ventures into Tikopia, as well as an additional venture into Vanikoro. Of note in the former area are the excavation sites at Kiki and Sinapupu, both of ... More

This chapter details further archaeological ventures into Tikopia, as well as an additional venture into Vanikoro. Of note in the former area are the excavation sites at Kiki and Sinapupu, both of which hold important evidence into Tikopia's long history. Coming after the Lapita-related potsherds from Kiki in the stratigraphic sequence, the author hypothesized that those excavated from Sinapupu might represent a period when Tikopia had contacts with islands to the south, in northern Vanuatu. The chapter also describes a brief stop at the island of Vanikoro. The Melanesian Vanikoro culture was different from that of Polynesian Tikopia, which produced some obstacles for Kirch in engaging with the islanders. The archaeological finds at Vanikoro were, however, important in showing that both it and Tikopia had once been part of a more extensive trade network linking the Santa Cruz Islands with northern Vanuatu.Less

Looking Backward, Moving Forward

Robert H. Abzug

in Psyche and Soul in America: The Spiritual Odyssey of Rollo May

May turns to writing a fond and interpretively acute short book on his relationship to Paul Tillich-Paulus—and runs into difficulties with Hannah Arendt’s own memoir of her marriage. He then ... More

May turns to writing a fond and interpretively acute short book on his relationship to Paul Tillich-Paulus—and runs into difficulties with Hannah Arendt’s own memoir of her marriage. He then publishes The Courage to Create. May becomes more and more alienated in New York, feeling drawn to California and its more open and psychologically progressive atmosphere. He accepts a Regents Professorship at the University of California Santa Cruz, but has a mixed time because of health problems and marital strife with Ingrid. At the same time, May becomes more critical of the more narcissistic and quick-fix nature of some of the humanistic psychology movement, and he along with others convene as theory conference to establish a more serious and scientifically sound basis for the movement,also one that focused on social issues in addition to personal well-being. By fall 1975, he moves to Tiburon, California, and separates from Ingrid.Less

Old Stories in New Letters (1520s–1550s)

Camilla Townsend

in Annals of Native America: How the Nahuas of Colonial Mexico Kept Their History Alive

In Central Mexico, the generation in power at the time of the Spanish conquest faced not only a crisis but also a new set of opportunities. Don Alonso Castañeda Chimalpopoca, a chief of Cuauhtinchan ... More

In Central Mexico, the generation in power at the time of the Spanish conquest faced not only a crisis but also a new set of opportunities. Don Alonso Castañeda Chimalpopoca, a chief of Cuauhtinchan whose younger relatives attended the Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, supervised the transcription of his people’s history into the text now known as the Historia Tolteca Chichimeca, while peers of his worked on the Annals of Tlatelolco. They welcomed the use of a phonetic alphabet. In the history they recorded in their texts, the political nature of marriage alliances and warfare are both key elements.Less